The internet has grown exponentially in the last decade. In addition to being used as an information resource, the internet plays a major role in facilitating growth of commerce. Each year billions of dollars of merchandise and other articles are bought and sold via the internet. In addition, many business and other institutions use the internet to interact with their customers. As a result, there has been an explosion in the number of websites that are associated with some form of business activity. Each website can be linked to a domain name, e.g., the website “www.example.com” can be associated with the example.com domain. A domain name is a primary vehicle to establish an on-line presence on the internet and is used to identify computer systems on the internet. As the number of websites has increased, so has the demand for domain names. Domain names are usually leased by paying an annual subscription fee.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is the part of the Internet infrastructure that translates human-readable domain names into the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers needed to establish TCP/IP communication over the Internet. DNS allows users to refer to web sites, and other resources, using easier to remember domain names, such as “www.example.com”, rather than the numeric IP addresses associated with a website, e.g., 123.4.56.78, and assigned to computers on the Internet. Each domain name can be made up of a series of character strings (labels) separated by dots. The right-most label in a domain name is known as the “top-level domain” (TLD). Examples of well-known TLDs are “.com”; “.net”; “.org.” etc. Each TLD supports second-level domains, listed immediately to the left of the TLD, e.g. the “example” level in “www.example.com”. Each second-level domain can include a number of third-level domains located immediately to the left of the second-level domain, e.g. the “www” level in “www.example.com”.
There can be additional level domains as well, with virtually no limitation. For example, a domain with additional domain levels could be “www.photos.example.com”. It should also be noted that a single IP address, e.g. a single server, can support numerous domain names. That is, different domain names may resolve to the same server, that can then determine what content to provide based on the requested domain name and/or additional non-domain information. This is sometimes referred to as virtual hosting.
The responsibility for operating each TLD (including maintaining a registry of the second-level domains within the TLD) is delegated to a particular organization, known as a domain name registry (“registry”). The registry is primarily responsible for answering queries for IP addresses associated with domains (“resolving”), typically through DNS servers that maintain such information in large databases, and operating its top-level domain.
Each domain name can be registered with a registry that provides the basic DNS resolution for that domain name. For example, VeriSign Inc. is the current domain name registry for the “.com” and “.net” domains. Each domain name can be subject to an annual registration fee, as described above. The renewal fee can depend on several factors including the type of domain, the length of its existence, type of website associated with a domain, or any other relevant factor. In some instances, the renewal fee can be fixed per domain category.